FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional data storage system, including a hard disk platter 101, in which circumferential tracks include multiple data regions, such as data regions 102a-102c, 103a-103c and 104a-104c, separated by wedge-shaped servo zones, such as servo zones 105, 106 and 107. A reading device, such as magnetic transducer 108, may be suspended over platter 101 on a swing arm 109 while platter 101 rotates (in direction 110), such that the transducer passes over a servo zone (e.g., servo zone 105) before passing over a data region (e.g., data region 103a). In passing over servo zone 105, transducer 108 detects positioning information encoded thereon, and is thereby able to accurately determine its position with respect to data region 103a. 
Accurate positioning information becomes increasingly important as the size of the magnetic domains (or other structures representing data bits) is decreased in order to provide increased data capacities. For example, in data storage media with very high areal density, timing jitter sources present a serious obstacle to the synchronization between a write head and the physical location of a particular magnetic domain. In this regard, by the time the transducer has passed part of the way along the track length of a data region, the synchronization may be lost. This could be offset by decreasing the track length of data regions, and increasing the number of servo regions, but such an approach would reduce the amount of data that could be stored on the medium.